may impress upon us. Nothing can be more incorrect. We are a branch lopped off from an old and highly cultivated nation. The artists, scholars, poets, and philosophers of Great Britain are all ours. We have had the same origin with that nation, speak the same language, and have perpetuated the same general opinions, manners, customs, and pursuits. Our country has, however, been mostly filled up by adventurers in pursuit of gain, and such has been the bountiful returns which it has yielded to industry, that the struggle for wealth has hitherto been so much the leading idea of American society, that all other pursuits have obtained but a secondary place. "I cannot," says M. de Tocqueville, “consent to separate America from Europe, in spite of the ocean that interI consider the people of the United States as that portion of the English people which is commissioned to explore the wilds of the new world; while the rest of the nation, enjoying more leisure, and less harassed by the drudgery of life, may devote its energies to thought, and enlarge, in all directions, the empire of the mind."

venes.

This view of the case will generally be acknowledged as correct. The Americans, with the store-house of English arts and letters open to them, could not fail to be a cultivated people, although they have not distinguished themselves in literature or the fine arts. But whoever has watched the progress of society here, will have discovered that as capital accumulates, and the pursuits of men admit of greater leisure, the taste for the fine arts has gradually improved, and men who make literature and science the business of their

lives are becoming less and less rare. Within the last few years Anthon, Wayland, Upham, Stuart, Day, Bancroft, Sparks, Prescott, and others, have given to the world works of that standard and sterling character which will go far to prove that the temper of democracy is not unfriendly to the cultivation of letters. At the same time it is true that in America, and probably, to a greater or less extent, in all democratic countries, the people are naturally disposed to practical rather than theoretical science. The general equality of conditions, and the ease with which men rise from one position in society to another, prove a constant stimulant to exertion and enterprise. The people are therefore restless, ambitious, and constantly seeking some shorter road to wealth and fame. Every machine which spares labor, every instrument which diminishes

the cost of production, every invention which promises in any way to be useful, and every discovery that promotes the well being of man, possesses a peculiar value. Hence all the powers of the mind are brought to bear on practical results. "These very Americans," says de Tocqueville, "who have not discovered one of the general laws of mechanics, have introduced into navigation an engine which changes the aspect of the world."

It is also this everlasting struggle for something higher and better, resulting from a feeling that actuates every bosom, but which in America is brought out into the foreground by the freedom of our condition, which produces that perpetual disquiet—that inordinate love of excitement-that peculiar "unrest" which has so frequently attracted the notice of foreigners. "A native of the United States," says the French tourist, "clings to this world's goods as if he were certain never to die; and he is so hasty at grasping at all within his reach, that one would suppose he was constantly afraid of not living long enough to enjoy them. He clutches every thing, he holds nothing fast, but soon loosens his grasp to pursue fresh gratifications. A man builds a house to spend his latter years in, and sells it before the roof is on: he plants a garden, and lets it just as the trees are coming into bearing: he brings a field into tillage, and leaves other men to gather the crops: he embraces a profession, and gives it up: he settles in a place which he soon after leaves to carry his changeable longings elsewhere. If his private affairs leave him any leisure, he instantly plunges into the vortex of politics and if at the end of a year of unremitting labor he finds he has a few days' vacation, his eager curiosity whirls him over the vast extent of the United States, and he will travel fifteen hundred miles in a few days to shake off his happiness. Death at length overtakes him, but it is before he is weary of his bootless chase of that complete felicity which is ever on the wing."

M. de Tocqueville justly observes, that this spectacle is not in itself a novelty, but that the novelty consists in the fact of a whole nation being actuated by the same unconquerable restlessness at the same time, which doubtless results from the great freedom of our condition, and the part which every man takes in public affairs. Here every thing must necessarily be in motion. Public opinion is the basis of all public action, and to direct it every effort is put into requisition. Eloquence, argument, association, the pulpit, the

press, all do their part. The Dutch smoke over every thing, the Americans talk over every thing. Here the people are met to decide on the building of a church; there they are canvassing for the next election; a little further on they are discussing some public improvement; and in another direction they are passing censures on the government. Schools, colleges, roads, canals, morals, and almost every thing else are patronized here by the public, as they are abroad by the nobility. This feature alone gives an air of bustle to the country, which, however, is greatly increased by the rich reward which is sure to follow energy and enterprise.

The disposition to associate for the accomplishment of any great object, though not peculiar to America, is, in the nature of things, carried to a much greater extent here than in Europe, and for reasons similar to those which have been assigned above. This circumstance could not fail to attract the attention of so acute an observer as de Tocqueville. "The most democratic country on the face of the earth," he observes, "is that in which men have, in our time, carried to the highest perfection the art of pursuing, in common, the object of their common desires, and have applied this new science to the greatest number of purposes. Is this the result of accident? or is there in reality any necessary connection between the principle of association and that of equality?"

The conclusion to which he arrives is, that it is a natural result of democratic society. Here individuals, being less powerful than in aristocratic countries, find it more necessary to combine their strength and hence the accomplishment of those gigantic works which are everywhere going on around us, and which without such combination could never be effected. "Wherever," he says, "at the head of some new undertaking, you see the government, in France, or a man of rank, in England, in the United States you are sure to find an association." The associations for moral and intellectual cultivation seem particularly to have attracted his attention, and he speaks frequently of their importance and influence. "The first time," says he, "I heard in the United States that a hundred thousand men had bound themselves publicly to abstain from spirituous liquors, it appeared to me more like a joke than a serious engagement; and I did not at once perceive why these temperate citizens could not content themselves with drinking water by their own firesides. I at last understood that these hundred thou

sand Americans, alarmed by the progress of drunkenness around them, had made up their minds to patronize temperance. They acted just in the same way as a man of high rank who should dress very plainly in order to inspire the humbler orders with a contempt for luxury."

The great propensity for speech-making in our representative assemblies is very appropriately noticed by M. de Tocqueville, and the causes which produce it pointed out. "In America," he says, "it generally happens that a representative becomes somebody from his position in the assembly. He is therefore perpetually haunted by a craving to acquire importance there, and he feels a petulant desire to be constantly obtruding his opinions on the house. His own vanity is not the only stimulant which urges him on in this course, but that of his constituents, and the continual necessity of propitiating them."

This idea is followed through several pages, and the author undertakes to show, what is probably clear enough to the reader, that the more intimate and immediate the dependence between the representative and his constituents, the more will this disposition be encouraged. In all democratic countries eloquence must necessarily be one of the great levers by which society is moved, as it is more apt to inspire admiration among the masses than any other quality, unless it may be personal courage. Public speaking is, therefore, the shortest road to fame, and it is consequently crowded with votaries. But as the spirit of our institutions causes a constant change in our representative bodies, it follows that a multitude of persons must always find their way to our legislative halls who, while they have the disposition to distinguish themselves by a speech, are little skilled in the graces of oratory. It is some consolation, however, to know that what we thus lose in dignity, we gain in honest intentions and purity of purpose. A frequent change of representation is a strong safeguard against corruption.

We had purposed to devote a portion of this article to an examination of those parts of M. de Tocqueville's work which we hold to be erroneous: his doctrine of the tyranny of majorities—his views of the instability of our laws-his chapter on the aversion of democracies to revolutions-the legal profession, and other things which have occurred to us in the course of our reading. Some of these topics are mainly discussed in the first part of Democracy in Ame

rica, but as they are reiterated in the volume before us, they very properly come within the scope of this article. But we have already occupied so much space as to prevent the fulfilment of this design, and we shall only advert in brief terms to that strange position assumed by the French tourist, that democracies are averse to revolutions, because the mass of the people hold property, and all revolutions threaten the tenure of property. We are the more surprised at this position because de Tocqueville, in the main, seems to understand us, and for the further reason, that the real cause why great revolutions so seldom take place in democratic governments is so very apparent.

Since the final separation of this country from Great Britain, a period of some sixty-five years, we have never had what in Europe would be regarded as a revolution. It is true that we have, during that time, changed our form of government, but this has never been regarded either in Europe or America as a revolution, and produced not half the commotion which has sometimes been exhibited in the election of a president. If we turn to France, the country in which de Tocqueville resides, during the same time, we shall find quite a different state of things. When Mr. Jefferson wrote the immortal Declaration of Independence, Louis XVI. had just ascended the throne of France. Scarcely had the independence of America been acknowledged by the different powers of Europe, when we behold the monarch deposed, tried, condemned, and beheaded. A succession of great revolutions followed each other with astonishing rapidity. The different constitutions of the national assembly, the convention, the directory—the usurpations of Napoleon, the consulate for ten years, the consulate for life, the empire-then the restoration-then again another mighty revolution caused by the appearance of Napoleon from Elba-the hundred days-the second restoration—then, after a longer period of quiet, the three days—and, finally, the accession of Louis Philippe. But this fearful catalogue of revolutions bears no proportion to the unsuccessful attempts at violent changes which have interrupted the short intervals of tranquility between the chief acts of the drama. For the last few years there has scarcely been an arrival from the "land of corn and wine," without bringing us some account of infernal machines or trials for high treason.

Such a contrast could scarcely have escaped the observations